


Blackout

by Pickitup



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-11-12 23:05:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18020186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickitup/pseuds/Pickitup
Summary: The back of Bucky’s neck ached that morning, deep, and throbbing to the bone, for no obvious reason he could feel when he explored it with his fingers, awkwardly trying to catch sight of it in his shaving mirror. He’d had to learn his body anew since his escape: the scar tissue down the seam of his shoulder, the marks from bullets, knives, one even from a longsword, his freckles, moles. There was this one mark under his hairline, at the base of his neck, that no matter how much he tried he couldn’t remember causing. The scar tissue was raised and bumpy, and you could only see it if he tied his hair back – so he didn’t. It felt weird still when he touched it, like if he just pressed his fingers there long enough he’d summon some sort of ghost who’d fill in for him ‘you got this in a barfight in Seattle in 1963’ or ‘mission gone bad in Berlin, you barely made it out with your life’. But nothing, just an echo of a sensation when he touched it, a snatch of a melody where the chorus is just out of reach.Post Winter Soldier. Bucky still has gaps in his memory, and one of them is that he's omega, and bonded to Steve. Just your average story of bond-mates first, lovers later.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! It's me! I write fan fiction every two years and then go back to lurking again! I know exactly where this is going and plan to update regularly.

The back of Bucky’s neck ached that morning, deep, and throbbing to the bone, for no obvious reason he could feel when he explored it with his fingers, awkwardly trying to catch sight of it in his shaving mirror. He’d had to learn his body anew since his escape: the scar tissue down the seam of his shoulder, the marks from bullets, knives, one even from a longsword, his freckles, moles. There was this one mark under his hairline, at the base of his neck, that no matter how much he tried he couldn’t remember causing. The scar tissue was raised and bumpy, and you could only see it if he tied his hair back – so he didn’t. It felt weird still when he touched it, like if he just pressed his fingers there long enough he’d summon some sort of ghost who’d fill in for him ‘you got this in a barfight in Seattle in 1963’ or ‘mission gone bad in Berlin, you barely made it out with your life’. But nothing, just an echo of a sensation when he touched it, a snatch of a melody where the chorus is just out of reach. And this morning that sensation was bruised and painful. He took a couple of advil, swallowed with water straight out of the faucet. Looked critically at his reflection for a moment. Eyes almost bruised from lack of sleep, but face filling out more than it had in years – who knew that when you replaced a heady diet of protein shakes and torture with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you’d start to look more like a person? Even if he didn’t feel like a person quite yet, more like a collection of disparate images, some kind of impressionist painting.

He went for a run, recognising his mood that day as dangerous, one of those where a dark wave could come out from beneath him and pull him under if he let it. Boston was pretty, quaint, and European-looking. He had never lived there before that he remembered, which made it easier. He ran by the Charles Rivah, pounding the bike path like it was responsible for everything bad that had ever happened to him, ignored the feel of his sweaty hair on the scar on his neck. Spent his journey purposefully not thinking of anything other than who the new Bachelor was going to be; what the new iPhone would look like; why modern sneakers looked like something an astronaut would wear. Modern life was a kick. 

He wondered how Rogers had done it. If he knew no one understood that ‘snap your cap’ meant angry, and the cashier in the 7-Eleven would just blink at you if you said it. Or that no one would judge you if you slept with someone and it was just sex, not going steady. That ‘man-buns’ were a thing. 

A lot of his memories of Steve contained flashes of things which he found to be a mix of comforting and arousing. His sex drive had come back which was mortifying and some of his dreams.... well. Narrow hips in his hands. The delicate trace of collarbones beneath his calloused thumbs. Licking sweat from someone’s neck while rutting against their hip. There were a lot of faces in these dreams, some he knew enough to put a name to, others he didn’t, which again led him back to those gaping gaps in his memory. 

He imagined finding Rogers again (Stevie) and asking him, very seriously, ‘Did you used to kiss my mouth very solemnly after I’d eaten apple pies, licking up every trace of juice from the corner of my lips? Did we hang outside from the fire escape by our ankles? Would we fight about girls because you wanted a dame of your own, or because you wanted me?’ There was no mention of any of that in the history books after all, though it would hardly be the first time anything queer got erased.

He ended his run at the 100% Gym, rolling his tired muscles out on the mats and delaying his return to his empty apartment where he had nothing to do except sit online and keep an eye on the weird conspiracy subreddits where people occasionally posted about Hydra. His mind today felt about as whole as a colander. He wanted the distraction of just moving from task to task – putting the foam roller away, child’s pose to finish, trying to remember what his former therapist had said about visualising stress leaving his body with each breath. The shower was appropriately grim, like every gym shower, and he deliberately ignored the back of his neck as he squeezed his hair out, took the long route home via Starbucks. 

He ran into the woman next door in the hallway: she caught him as he was fumbling his keys out of his pocket (seriously, who invented jeans this tight?) at the same time as trying not to drop his foamy take-out coffee all over the ugly carpet. Her and her husband had a spotty, awkward teenaged son who he’d once caught trying to buy beers at one of the college bars. He’d decided it was none of his business until the kid got into a fight, and Bucky had hauled him home – literally – by his collar. His mom (Sandy? Sadie?) had decided Bucky was her best friend ever since, so he did a good job at avoiding her whenever possible. 

‘I never see you any more, Jimmy!’

Bucky shrugged, still trying to get the keys extracted and vowing he was going to go to a thrift shop and buy some baggy old man jeans. ‘Work… you know.’

‘Well, we’re having a party and I’m sure even the restaurant will let you have one night off. It’s for my son!’ she was all toothy smiles, a tiny fleck of pink lipstick caught on her right canine, her long blonde hair pulled back in a braid. ‘He just presented! The first alpha in our family in four generations!’ 

‘Wow,’ he said, in a fairly deadpan way. She was A Lot. This was A Lot. 

‘We’d love you there, us betas have to stick together right!’ He could almost feel the exclamation mark after her every sentence.

‘I’m heading out for a work trip,’ he pasted an apologetic expression on his face.

‘Oh well the party is on Friday, so, you should still be here then? It’s such a special occasion you know so…’

It was Wednesday. ‘Yeah the trip is tomorrow. A real shame ma’am.’ Ladies loved it when he called them ma’am, even though he didn’t do it on purpose, it was on old habit which apparently died as hard as he did. 

‘We’ll just have to have fun without you then, see you when you get back. My husband has been meaning to have you over for beers.’ She was such a nice woman, he knew. But he’d never be coming back. Maybe he could stay in the country, or maybe not, but Boston was done for him for a while at least.

‘Sure, I’d love that. I hope the party goes well,’ he nodded to her before quickening his step to the elevator. He hadn’t thought about alphas and omegas for a long, long time. Back when he had been a kid it wasn’t something you spoke about in polite company, really. Betas had been fascinated by it (probably still were, he imagined) but it was hard to mention being an alpha without people immediately thinking about uncontrollable sexual urges, the quirk of physiology which had given them an entirely unnecessary knot. He’d witnessed a lot of arguments in his time between beta women about if they’d want to date an alpha or not, but he’d only ever known one, before the army at least.

He’d only ever known Steve Rogers. The most unlikely alpha there was, on first glance to others, but the most obviously alpha person Bucky could ever have countenanced.

*** 

Bucky had very few belongings, and the next day found him on the Amtrak to New York, reading a beat-up old pulp scifi paperback he’d found in a thrift store, along with those unfashionable jeans. He never stayed in New York long but was unable to resist the pull back to the neighbourhoods of his youth, wanting to chase down his old shadows, see what it tugged from the recesses of his mind. Sometimes he would have a very strange moment where he felt like Steve and him were just around the corner, running ahead of him, if only he could hasten his steps to catch them up. And then he’d shake his head and they would be gone: the bouji hot dog and champagne pop-up overlaying his old boxing gym. The activated charcoal bakery where the orphanage once was.

He found an apartment pretty quickly. As long as you had no standards and/or a lot of credit cards in an array of aliases it wasn’t hard to find an Air BnB, and despite his draw to Brooklyn he ended up in Manhattan, in a nice one-bed with a view of The Beekman’s gothic exterior. 

He went out to a Chipotle for take-out, because they were the same the world over, and hoovered up a burrito in front of the news. There was some kind of disturbance on the Brooklyn Bridge, a group of people dressed in Chitauri Footsoldier uniforms had blocked it and there was a hostage situation taking place. Captain America was there, captured on grainy cell-phone footage by some idiot who’d rather film than hide, and so was Black Widow. The same minute looped over and over as the newscaster said they believed they were in some kind of death cult, inspired by the Chitauri invasion.

Well wasn’t that just peachy.

He watched for a while until it became clear that Captain America was winning and then changed the channel onto a mindless comedy. He usually watched greedily anything involving Captain America. The recriminations after Hydra was exposed. Cap’s handsome face obscured by his mask as he watched him doing a bit on SNL - camping it up like he used to during the war. On the phones during a telethon. He wondered if Cap was dating the redhead, if that bothered him, if it should bother him. He didn’t remember enough to know. He wondered how Natasha came out of the whole Hydra mess unscathed to become a rebranded hero, someone with little action models you could buy on Amazon. He couldn’t imagine that could ever happen for him.

His neck was still sore. Painkillers washed down with beers hadn’t had much of an effect. Or maybe his body just metabolised them too quickly. It had never seemed to matter what Hydra had given him to help the pain, on the rare occasions they had at least: he had just got used to dealing with it. But he was getting soft again, too used to a normal life. Or, as close to normal as he could get it.

Sometimes, when he watched the avengers fighting on TV he would fantasise about putting a mask on and joining them, disappearing into the night afterwards like a comic-book vigilante. But Steve. Well. Steve would know him anywhere even if the others never matched him with the shadowy winter soldier. So he saved his fighting for the boxing gym, and for his expeditions to find Hydra operatives, leaving them handcuffed on police department doorsteps, an anonymous act of heroism (or revenge, he was never sure). Sure there might never be a Bucky Bear or t-shirts on Etsy with his face on them, but he could live without that level of fame.

He decided to go for a look outside, given how close he was to the bridge. Which was objectively a bad decision but if he couldn’t make a bad decision after having to move city abruptly, no sleep, and a lot of painkillers mixed with alcohol, then when could he?

It was warm out, one of those spring days where you were reminded that winter was over, that drowsy, hot evenings were around the corner. Bucky liked spring, found something hopeful in it, even as he knew that his drowsy, hot evenings would be spent alone, hunched over his laptop, or laying low in some warehouse, waiting for his quarry to cross his path. 

He was only a few minutes away from the site, and there were still police cordons up, though the crowds had dispersed. His neck was warmer now, he kept scratching at it, convinced there must be something there even though when he had looked in the mirror all he could spot was old scar tissue. Same as ever. He loitered on the sidewalk, feeling like he was itching out of his skin, antsy as fuck but not sure why. 

There was a moment where he stood there, hands in his pockets, and he felt a stillness wash over him suddenly, a calm of sorts, and then he saw Steve in the distance. Even with a motorbike helmet on, and nondescript clothes, he recognised him. Knowing Steve he had probably been comforting people who had witnessed the attack, making all sorts of patriotic and comforting statements to swooning women. He looked good, Bucky thought, more alive than he did in twitter selfies and talk-show interviews. Bigger, maybe, than Bucky remembered, more solid, and there was something about him that made Bucky’s knees go weak, like he was the heroine in a Harlequin romance.

He didn’t know what it was that made him move out of the shadows, raise a hand in a silent gesture. He could feel the moment Steve saw him, solemnly watched him kill the engine on his bike, wheel it over towards him. His face exhibited no surprise that Bucky was here like this, as if it was normal and casual to run into one another on the street. He didn’t look scared of Bucky, and that trust made Bucky more scared than anything: what if he betrayed it, without even meaning to?

‘Bucky,’ it was just one word, but it contained multitudes. Steve bit his lip, eyes darting from Bucky’s face to his shoulders, his boots, back up, like he didn’t know where to look first.

‘You giving me the eye, Rogers?’

Whatever Steve had expected him to say, that was not it, and his laugh was startled, accompanied by a loosening of his shoulders. Steve had his helmet clutched to his chest like he didn’t know what to do with his body. Bucky understood that, suddenly very aware of where his hands were, what to do with them. His pulse had picked up. He pushed his hair back just to have something to do with his hands, and Steve tracked the gesture, watched him bare his neck.

And then Steve was off his bike, helmet on the floor (neatly, of course) and he crowded Bucky against the wall, seemingly with no care who saw him, no care who saw this, saw Captain America manhandling a man in a public place. Bucky was hardly small, but he felt it for a moment, the bulk of Steve against him, his arms braced either side of Bucky’s head.

‘You smell good,’ Steve said, and his pupils were totally blown, more black than blue in his eyes, which were intent. He gathered Bucky’s hair in one hand, lifted it gently and Bucky stayed frozen, not entirely sure what was happening but knowing that it felt good, that it felt right.

Steve licked along the scar tissue there and it stopped buzzing for the first time in days, the relief was intense, his nerves settling finally even though he had no idea _why_ , why his body could remember something that the rest of him couldn’t. It was unsettling as much as the feel of Steve’s dick against his hip was arousing, and familiar, in a way he couldn’t place.

‘Do you want to get off the street?’ Bucky said, finally, when it seemed apparent that Steve was just gonna stay there, nosing and nipping at him.

‘Yeah, shit, I-’

‘You were too busy making out with my hairline to think of that, yeah, I know,’ Bucky grumbled, in a tone of calm which shocked him. He didn’t know why he wasn’t freaking out but he felt more relaxed than he had in a week.

Steve unpeeled himself, parked his bike, stood looking up at Bucky like he was an answer to every question Steve had ever had.

‘You want to go somewhere neutral?’ Steve said, like common sense had returned now he was no longer touching Bucky.

‘Nah, let’s go to my place,’ Bucky pointed a thumb over his shoulder. 

‘You’re staying in Manhattan?’ Steve’s nose wrinkled.

‘Hey, last I heard you were in Stark Tower. Glass houses, stones, etc.’

Bucky swiped in to the building, not entirely sure why he was acting like this was a normal thing to do. Would Steve tell someone he was here? Could he ask Steve all the questions he had (hell he had a list of them somewhere in his backpack)? Why had he just let Steve grind up on him like they were fourteen years old?

He saw the apartment through Steve’s eyes once he let him in.

‘Wow, it’s-’

‘- an Air BnB, is what it is.’

‘I was gonna say, Buck, your style’s changed a lot.’ 

The blinds were metal and floor length, the couch was leather, the walls were black and red, and there was an enormous fluffy rug on the floor. It looked like 50 Shades had thrown up on it. And yes, Bucky _had_ read 50 Shades.

Bucky wondered if he was supposed to offer Steve a beer. How did these conversations go? There was no rulebook for this, no amount of research could help you bridge the gap between being humped in an alleyway and trying to have a rational conversation about everything that had happened.

‘I’m not brainwashed any more,’ Bucky said, all in a rush, walking over to the fridge to grab some beers, more so he didn’t have to look at Steve than from any desire to drink one.

‘You seem normal,’ he shrugged, considering Bucky. ‘You’re not wearing an assassin-suit for one, and I can’t _see_ any weapons.’

‘There’s a knife strapped to my calf,’ Bucky offered. 

‘It’s New York,’ said Steve. ‘No one can blame you for _one_ knife.’

Bucky snorted, held a bottle up to Steve, ‘you want?’

‘It has no impact on me, you know that’ Steve said. ‘But they’re still satisfying.’

‘Yeah, they’re symbolic, I guess.’ Bucky used his metal hand to pop the lid.

‘Neat trick.’

‘Yeah, all that Soviet programming and I mostly use it as a glorified bottle opener,’ he wasn’t sure where to sit, hovered awkwardly over the couch until Steve moved over, patted the seat next to him.

They clinked beer bottles.

‘I knew you were here,’ Steve said, after taking a long sip.

‘You got eyes on me, Rogers? That little redhead?’ Bucky had had so many conversations with Steve in his head, and none of them had gone like this. They’d all been full of recriminations, fights, sadness. Not this light tone, which should have felt forced but felt easier than anything had in months.

‘No Bucky,’ Steve was nonplussed. ‘I could feel you.’

‘You’re telepathic now? Another serum side effect they didn’t mention in any of those museums…’

Steve frowned. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘I don’t remember a lot, you’re gonna have to be more specific, pal.’

‘You don’t remember me?’

‘Sure I remember you: five foot nothing and fighting anyone bigger than you, which was basically everyone-’

Steve shook his head, ‘You don’t remember this?’ His hand went to the back of Bucky’s neck, to the scar tissue there.

‘What is that?’ Bucky asked. ‘It’s been sore the last few days, but I can’t see anything there.’

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and Bucky wondered what he’d said. ‘It’s our bond-mark, Buck, you don’t remember our bond-mark.’

‘We’re… bonded? That’s not… I’m not... We’re not...’ Apparently he was no longer capable of finishing sentences.

‘We did it before you enlisted. Unbonded omegas couldn’t enlist. But with a bite on your neck no one would know what you were.’

Bucky put his head in his hands. ‘I’m not an omega,’ he said.

‘Oh don’t start with any of that prejudice crap, Buck, it’s not like it used to be, it’s _fine_ to be an omega now.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Bucky said, raising his head to glare at Steve. ‘I’m not a Neanderthal. I know omegas are rare but most company healthcare plans cover their suppressants, blah blah blah. I’m just not one.’

‘Bucky,’ Steve looked distressed. His hand went to the back of Bucky’s neck. ‘We’re mated. I promise you. You might not remember it but,’ he subsided. ‘Seriously, you don’t remember it at all?’ His face was flushed.

Bucky searched the recesses of his mind desperately but came up blank, could feel the weight of Steve’s gaze on him and it made him panic more. ‘I think my body remembers. When you touched me there it settled me. I felt less like climbing out of my skin.’

‘You’re going into heat.’

‘No I’m not,’ Bucky said, instinctively argumentative until Steve’s hand curled over his and he relaxed despite himself.

‘I’m omega?’ His tone was resigned. Steve would never lie about something like that.

‘Yeah. You presented when you were seventeen. You stopped boxing. We used to get you black market pills in Queens, and then you let me bite you, stop your heats, neutralise your scent.’

‘So were we,’ he gestured between them, vaguely.

‘We never consummated the bond,’ Steve said, which sounded extremely vague.

‘But I have these dreams,’ Bucky tailed off uncomfortably.

Steve smiled sadly then, ‘You dream about me?’

‘Yeah, you’re always small in them, pre-serum I guess,’ his hand went to the back of his neck. ‘I always wanted to ask you, if I ever met you, if they were real or not.’

‘We used to fool around, before we knew I was alpha. And then we had to stop because I couldn’t risk going into rut. And then we bonded, and you enlisted, and then I lost you.’ He made it sound matter-of-fact, but Bucky could see the tightening of his jaw as he listed everything which had happened between them.

‘I remember us in a narrow bed, your wrists were so small I could hold both of them in my hand,’ Bucky said.

Steve looked at him, ‘It’s not all gone?’

‘No. I guess not. I hope not. Omega, huh?’ he blew out a breath. 

‘Your heat’s due in a week. I can tell, Buck.’

‘Can I go on suppressants?’

‘Not this close to heat, they won’t work. Omegas don't normally go into spontaneous heat, not when they're bonded, but who knows what the serum did to you.’

‘That and the torture and being stored on ice for decades,’ he sounded sour ( _felt_ sour), downed his beer, wiped his mouth. 

‘How long have you got the apartment for? Or can you come stay with me for the next week or two?’

‘Sure, because what I’ve always dreamed of is being naked and vulnerable in the vicinity of Tony Stark.’

‘No, you’re right, he’s alpha too, it’s a bad idea.’

‘That’s not really what I meant,’ Bucky muttered. ‘But I have the place for two weeks. I’m going to France after this.’

Steve raised an eyebrow. ‘Just wanted a croissant and a trip up the Eiffel Tower?’

‘Sure,’ Bucky said. ‘That and the Hydra operative in Calais, still smuggling weaponry into Britain.’

‘You’re not going anywhere like this,’ said Steve and even though Bucky knew he might well be right this was a lot for him to take in, a lot of unnecessary alpha-ness filling the apartment and yes, Bucky _could_ smell him now, like a part of his body had just been switched back on. But, his mate? Bonded? He should have remembered something like that. Instead of remembering episodes of One Day At A Time (the original), and how Pop Tarts took way longer to cool down than you thought. These were pointless memories – taking up room needed for something as life-altering as this.

‘It’s fine, I can stay here, I’m sure Monsieur Montel will wait a week or two.’

‘Good,’ Steve stood up. ‘I’ll stay here.’

‘Excuse me?’ Bucky’s face was amused but his tone was not. ‘You’ll stay here with me during my first ever heat, or at least the first heat I goddamn remember, and you’re what, gonna knot me? ‘Hi Bucky, last time we met you tried to kill me, and you’re a war criminal, but let’s fuck!’’ He laughed, a hoarse sound with nothing resembling mirth anywhere near it.

‘No,’ Steve looked horrified, ran a hand through his hair which was uncharacteristically ruffled, as if he’d been pulling at it during their conversation. Bucky hadn’t noticed. ‘But you can’t want to do this alone, Buck? You have no memory of even being an omega. You have no one to take care of you. Bond or not, I’m your friend.’

Bucky remembered enough to know that that was true, or, that at least Steve believed it to be true. And that was probably the same thing, or close enough.

‘Let me call Natasha, tell her I’ve got flu or something, that I’ll be out of action for a while. They won’t guess.’

‘We’d just better hope that no one saw you manhandling me on the sidewalk,’ Bucky said, deliberately trying to make Steve feel bad in a weird attempt to regain some sort of control over the situation. He was angry. Angry that his mind could play a trick on him like this. There were no snatches of memory about this, no vague recollections. Just echoing, resounding silence in his brain. Reminding him that however far he’d come there was still a hell of a lot further to go. 

It’s not like Bucky just woke up one day and his memory was back, everything slotted together in order, laid out neatly with place and date-stamp next to it, like one of those timelines in history museums. It was more like a giant puzzle, one of those really complicated ones with thousands of pieces, or a patchwork quilt made by someone who was vaguely senile – bits missing, huge chunks perfectly finished right next to yet more gaping holes. So some things came back (weirdly) easily like that his favourite candy was Snickers, but that he had developed a taste for Dairy Milk during a mission in Brighton in 1984. He knew too that he had been a talented amateur boxer. That he was as skilled with a knife as with a katana, and that he found reruns of the Golden Girls oddly comforting viewing. But then there were these black holes. They were always painful, like when you get a tooth pulled, obsessively running your tongue over the gap even though you knew it would heal in its own time.

He just never expected one of the black holes to be this big. He remembered alphas and omegas, of course, his high-school girlfriend had been alpha, and he remembered Steve presenting, and then being too sick to risk anything. 

But where his memories of bonding should be – a life-changing decision, to bond! – was just blank space. White noise. 

‘Yeah, you know me, Nat, always love a holiday,’ Steve’s voice was teasing on the phone, and it made Bucky feel inexplicably angry. That he could laugh and joke, after dropping a bombshell like that.

There was a sour feeling in Bucky’s stomach as he realised – suspected – that his traitorous body had taken him to New York for a reason, taken him on that walk for a reason. It was looking for his mate, looking for _Steve_. Omegas and alphas rarely bonded, because it was supposed to be for life: more lasting than marriage even. Of course, some people did break their bond, leave their mate for someone else, but it was a situation which always ended messily. With a broken heart, and usually broken bones, if the old alpha found the new alpha. That bite on the back of Bucky’s neck symbolised a lot of stuff, none of it possible to neatly unpack. Especially not with Steve there, looming around his apartment, laughing on the phone to a woman. Huh. The flash of jealousy was new. He presumed it was heat related.

He went to recycle the bottles in the kitchen, deliberately chose a route which left too much space between him and Steve. Steve frowned at him and he gave him his best blank stare until Steve hung up the phone with a flurry of goodbyes and too much laughter for Bucky’s liking.

He made as much noise as possible throwing the bottles out, slammed a few doors for maximum effect.

‘You quite done?’ Steve’s tone was gentle even while his size made him imposing, leaning in the doorway, too close for comfort.

‘It’s a lot to take in,’ Bucky said, sinking down on to the floor, back against the wall. ‘I keep thinking I’m getting better, that I’m starting to know my own mind again, and then you’re telling me about my life but it’s not like my life, it’s like a story about someone else, someone I’ve never even met.’

Steve crouched down, approaching Bucky like he was a cornered animal, gently and slowly. Bucky appreciated and resented it in equal measure. ‘Your memories will come back.’

‘And what if they don’t?’

‘You’re just borrowing trouble thinking like that. Your other memories came back, didn’t they? These will too. And if not, we can figure it out. We were getting by okay without each other, no lapses into wild animalistic behaviour huh?’

‘So you’d leave me if I wanted you to?’

‘No, well,’ Steve huffed out a breath, folded himself down next to Bucky which was difficult given this kitchen did not seem big enough to do anything other than make coffee in. ‘I would leave if you wanted me to. But I’d hope you’d let me stay. You meant a lot to me once. We meant a lot to each other. And I know that that was decades ago but to me it really only felt like a year or two.’

‘Yeah,’ Bucky tilted his head back, blindly staring at the weird black ceiling. Seriously, who _lived_ here? ‘You can stay on the couch. I want to see a doctor after my heat. And then I want to go to France.’

‘I want to come to France too,’ Steve said, in his most Captain America authoritative way. 

‘Let’s take it a day at a time, pal,’ Bucky was amused, despite himself. ‘We get through my heat without either of us getting a black eye, maybe you can come be my Robin in France.’

‘You’d be Robin,’ Steve pinched him, not hard enough to hurt but Bucky pretended it did anyway, rubbed his wrist.

‘I thought you were supposed to protect your mate, not try and injure him,’ Bucky said balefully.

‘Last time I saw you, you tried to kill me.’ Steve’s tone was even.

‘And I then saved you, I should get some credit for that.’

‘Solving a situation you created – very heroic,’ Steve’s tone was droll. ‘You wanna stand up Buck? My back hurts like this.’

‘Yeah,’ Bucky said, though he sort of wanted to stay like this, protected and tucked away. He made no effort to stand up so Steve just rolled his eyes, got to his feet and did an enormous, bone-cracking stretch, wandered back into the living room. 

‘The couch doesn’t look comfy,’ he said.

‘You’ve had worse, jackass,’ Bucky said. ‘This is a palace compared to our billets.’

‘You remember those?’

‘I remember a lot of weird stuff. Just not this,’ he felt the back of his neck, noted how his skin there felt hot. Wondered if he could add omega research to the long list of stuff he read about online. 

He grabbed a comforter and pillow for Steve and tossed them to him. ‘You should tell that bird guy you found me,’ he said. ‘The one you follow me with.’

‘You know about that?’

‘I have eyes, Rogers. And he’s not stupid, even if he does hang out with you. If he can be trusted, you should let him know.’

Steve nodded, ‘He can be trusted.’

‘Alright then. Night Steve.’ He shut the bedroom door behind him, contemplated making it out down the fire escape for one heady moment before he remembered with a sinking sensation that if Steve was right, he didn’t want to be out on the streets during heat. And deep down he knew that Steve was right. 

He locked the door. Unlocked it. Locked it again, not sure if he was protecting himself from Steve or Steve from him. Not sure how heat would render him and not sure he wanted to find out.

He clicked the lock open, decisively, finally. It felt like an act of bravery. He got ready for bed, lay there, staring up at his reflection in the mirror overhead. If eyes were like windows, his were like doors. He shut them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The back of Bucky’s neck ached that morning, deep, and throbbing to the bone, for no obvious reason he could feel when he explored it with his fingers, awkwardly trying to catch sight of it in his shaving mirror. He’d had to learn his body anew since his escape: the scar tissue down the seam of his shoulder, the marks from bullets, knives, one even from a longsword, his freckles, moles. There was this one mark under his hairline, at the base of his neck, that no matter how much he tried he couldn’t remember causing. The scar tissue was raised and bumpy, and you could only see it if he tied his hair back – so he didn’t. It felt weird still when he touched it, like if he just pressed his fingers there long enough he’d summon some sort of ghost who’d fill in for him ‘you got this in a barfight in Seattle in 1963’ or ‘mission gone bad in Berlin, you barely made it out with your life’. But nothing, just an echo of a sensation when he touched it, a snatch of a melody where the chorus is just out of reach._
> 
>  
> 
> Post Winter Soldier. Bucky still has gaps in his memory, and one of them is that he's omega, and bonded to Steve. Just your average story of bond-mates first, lovers later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is Steve's perspective.

Bucky might have been struggling with his lack of memories, but Steve felt like he remembered enough for both of them. That he remembered too much, if anything: the feel of Bucky’s stubble on his shoulder-blades, the sinking sensation in his stomach when Bucky died, the devastation at yet another dead end in his hunt for the Winter Soldier. It had been like Bucky had disappeared from the face of the planet, totally erased himself.

‘We’ll find him,’ Sam would say, hand on Steve’s shoulder, and he’d sound confident, even though Steve knew that by then, after months of blind alleys, he must have felt as hopeless as Steve did.

He texted Sam, then, with a look at Bucky’s closed bedroom door, felt like if he stared hard enough at it he could see through it, could transmit his own memories to Bucky through sheer force of will alone.

Everyone laughed at Steve for his texting, but he actually knew exactly how to do it (he even knew what the peach emoji meant), he just let them have their fun because they seemed to like thinking he was an old fuddy-duddy.

‘Asset secured,’ he typed then erased. ‘Mission accomplished.’ He was being cowardly not calling him but he couldn’t risk an argument about what the fuck he thought he was doing. He settled on, ‘I found him, Sam. He’s okay. I’m okay. With him now. Will call in the a.m. Sincerely, Steve.’

Sam called immediately, of course, but Steve rejected the call twice, three times. He didn’t want to risk leaving the apartment, nor did he want to have a conversation about Bucky which Bucky could hear.

He sent a selfie back to Sam, to show he really was safe, holding up a piece of paper with the day’s date on. And then he sent another selfie with a piece of paper with a deliberately cartoonish drawing of Steve and Sam high-fiving drawn on it, with the words ‘Would I sketch this if kidnapped?’

Sam was typing for a long time, before he sent, ‘Roger that. 0700 hours call. Any later and I’m telling Widow.’

Steve grimaced at that. He’d tell Natasha in his own time. He knew she wasn’t going to like it by any means. She wouldn’t like the fact that Sam and him had been chasing the Winter Soldier down without her, and she’d probably think Bucky was faking his amnesia, and that he would kill Steve in his sleep. And there was so much context he couldn’t tell her, far too personal for him to want to share with anyone. Most people Steve knew now were betas, and the world had changed a lot (a _lot_ ) since Steve had been stuck on ice. People had parties to celebrate their kids presenting as omegas or alphas, there were whole reality shows about the concept. It was legal even for omegas to enlist. Back then, boy omegas were exceptionally rare, and they absolutely definitely weren’t allowed to join the army. Most of them worked in Hollywood, because nowhere else would hire them, and while suppressants could help you mimic a beta for a while, they were expensive, and hardly fool-proof. Mated omegas had no scent to anyone except their mate, almost like an alpha’s eyes would just pass over them in a crowd, which was how Bucky had got away with it the way he did. Steve too had no real scent. He’d occasionally catch someone’s gaze lingering on him but Natasha always just said it was because of his ass, not anything ‘archaic like traditional dominant hierarchies’. Which was a mouthful and a half, but it was a subject she seemed passionate about.

So, no one really knew about his history, about how it had been for him – for them – back when everything was much more rigid. Your orientation was your map for how your life would go. Alpha: a strong provider. Omega: a subservient help-meet. Which was why when Steve presented it felt like one big cosmic joke.

Steve was seventeen when they realised he was an alpha, which was late by most alpha standards but not particularly surprising given Steve seemed to be stuck at the height he'd reached at twelve years old, and was physically, well, 'challenged' was what the doctor said. It seemed a cruel irony that he had that body, he looked the way he did, and now he was confirmed as an alpha. He couldn't bear for anyone to know.

'No one's gonna know,' Bucky had said, eminently and infuriatingly reasonable, smoking on the fire escape, refusing to let Steve have one because of his asthma. 

'They might smell it on me,' Steve said, and flushed red at the mere thought.

'Who's going to get close enough to your ugly mug to smell you?' Bucky said, leaning in to flick Steve on the nose and then having to duck Steve's angry fists. Steve caught him on the shoulder and Bucky winced.

'Ow, your knuckles are sharp.'

'So's your tongue,' Steve said, sullen, looking down at the street far below him, idly wondering what would happen if he pushed Bucky off.

'No one will smell you, you'll be on the pill in no time.'

'With what money?' Steve snorted. He turned out both pockets, an elaborate mime to prove how empty they were. With Steve's illnesses it wasn't like weekend jobs were easy to come by.

But Bucky was smiling at him, cigarette held between his teeth. He blew out a handful of perfect smoke circles while Steve rolled his eyes and waited. Bucky reached out, cupped his hand over Steve's obstinate jaw, until Steve sighed, felt the tension roll out of his shoulders.

'You know I’ve got this.' Bucky always took such good care of him, and Steve couldn't even put it down to his alpha instincts – Bucky was a beta, as far as they knew. 

And Steve looked at him: his smiling mouth, the ember of his cigarette, and oh how he wanted.

Bucky was true to his word - as ever - and the money was there the next day, a thick heavy wad of it in Steve's jacket pocket, and a hand scrawled note, Doctor O’Brien, Cambria Heights, Queens.

It was one of Steve’s most treasured memories. He would draw it out like an old photograph, smooth out the creases, remember how it felt to know that Bucky would always be there for him. And now, he needed to be there for Bucky: to look after him, to help him remember everything he had forgotten.

It was a relief that he still knew Steve, that he hadn’t run from him. Steve wouldn’t have been able to bear that, if after all the chasing after him, all the exhaustion, the sadness, if he had finally found Bucky and Bucky had looked him in the eye and swore blind he didn’t know Steve from Adam. 

So, progress. He knew Steve, he remembered being intimate with Steve, he just…didn’t remember the rest. Which meant he didn’t remember the screaming row they had had when Bucky first suggested that Steve bite him. That he didn’t remember the miserable first heat Bucky spent, with Steve locking himself in the bathroom while Bucky begged him to come out, so out of his mind with need that he had quite forgotten that knotting him would probably kill Steve. Bucky had been wracked with guilt afterwards, had barely spoken to Steve for a week, which had been difficult given their apartment wasn’t big enough to swing a rat in, let alone a cat. Steve didn’t really blame Bucky’s subconscious for storing all of those memories away, protecting his recovering mind from the darkness and complexity within them – a blend of love, of lust, of fear. Bucky had never come to terms with being omega, although back then who could blame him? That mating bite was the only way he could ever have enlisted, and he’d cover it every day, terrified that someone would see it and know what it was, that he’d get sent home in disgrace, for ‘betraying his mate’ by endangering himself.

Steve found that he wanted to hit something, quite a lot, so busied himself instead by making a list of everything Bucky would need for his heat. Lists were good. Lists were comforting, they brought his temper under control which even now, with the best quality suppressants the government could buy, was stretched thin. 

He quickly wrote down Gatorade, Pedialyte, ice, candy, added a load of junk food to the list, then balanced it out with a ton of fruit. He didn’t want to have to leave the apartment to get it, was worried that Bucky wouldn’t let him back in.

He sighed, texted Sam again, ‘Hi Sam, Can you do me a favour in the morning? Regards, Steve.’ It killed them when he signed off his messages like that, and what started as a joke had ended up as a habit.

‘How early we talking?’ Sam must have still been up, too. It was late, Steve realised. He’d fought those dumbasses on the bridge earlier that night. It felt like a long time ago.

‘As early as you can, but if I’m disturbing you I can figure out another way.’

‘I’m playing Mass Effect, it’s probably good you’re disturbing me. Even I’m troubled by how many hours I’ve racked up on it.’

Steve cracked a smile at that before replying, ‘7am, I’ll send you the address as a voice message.’

‘You know you owe me the full story pretty soon, right?’

‘Yes, well aware of that!’ Just not my top priority right now, Steve added, to himself. He knew he was being unfair to Sam but it was a helluva lot to dump on someone else right now, and it felt like a major violation of Bucky’s privacy. He could sense that Bucky was on the verge of running again and that was the last thing he needed, to scare him away, especially on the verge of heat.

Steve sent Sam the list, the address and $100 via paypal, before stripping down to his boxers and trying to get comfy on a leather couch. Which was impossible, by the way. He kept sticking to it, and his attempts to tuck a sheet underneath him ended up with him waking up, trying to fight his way out of it, before sliding clean onto the floor. He ended up drifting off purely because he knew he’d need to have his wits about him the next day, to take care of Bucky. And with that appeal to his alpha instincts he finally drifted off.

*** 

‘You look like crap!’ Sam greeted him cheerily.

‘Slept on a leather couch, which I do _not_ recommend,’ Steve said, ruefully, taking the grocery bags carefully out of Sam’s grasp.

‘I got everything off your extremely weird list. You need me to carry them up?’

‘No, thank you, we’re okay but… he’s skittish. He’s just about putting up with me: you’d finish him off.’ Sam was beta at least, but Steve wasn’t going to take any chances. 

‘You’re safe though?’

‘Yeah, he remembers most stuff. He’s no threat.’

Sam looked unconvinced. ‘He’s still a deadly weapon, Steve, just wearing the face of your best friend.’

‘No, Sam, he _is_ my best friend. He was imprisoned and tortured for years. I read all the stuff they did to him. I’m not saying he’s perfectly well now, I’m no therapist, but I am telling you he’s the guy I knew before.’ Mostly, he added silently. ‘Look, I told Natasha I’d be off grid for a week or two, to keep everyone off my back until then. I’ll message you every day until then, and if you don’t hear from me you have my permission to contact her, and to tell her what’s going on. Okay?’

‘As compromises go, I’ll take it. You stay safe,’ Sam squeezed his shoulder, his face sympathetic. ‘I hope you’re right about him.’

‘Me too,’ Steve said, before setting his jaw, and heading back into the building. He couldn’t afford to be wrong.

*** 

Bucky was still in the bedroom when Steve got back up there: he could hear the water running in the shower, which reassured him that Bucky hadn’t jumped out of a window to escape while Steve was outside.

It was hard manoeuvring round the tiny galley kitchen, but he eventually got everything crammed away, before putting on a pot of coffee and frying up some bacon and waffles. Bucky used to inhale the stuff, and Steve knew he needed a lot of calories to make it through heat.

When he emerged, in a pair of grey sweatpants and his hair roughly dried, it was like someone had punched Steve in the stomach. He could barely breathe all of a sudden. He watched, helplessly, as one of the droplets of water slowly ran down Bucky’s chest, before he managed to prise his eyes away, back to Bucky’s face.

Bucky looked amused, slightly bashful even. ‘You wanna take a picture, pal?’

I do, I do want to take a picture, Steve thought, but self-preservation thankfully prevented him from saying so. ‘I’m sorry Buck, it’s been a long time and I never thought I’d see you again and-’ and then noisily, and embarrassingly, he found himself bursting into tears.

Bucky was at his side in a minute, arms round him, rubbing soothing circles on his back. ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here, I’m alive, you’re alive.’

‘You’re the only one who remembers me from before, the only one who gets it,’ Steve stuttered out against Bucky’s shoulder.

‘I don’t remember everything, but I remember enough,’ Bucky said.

Steve’s tears subsided as suddenly as they had come, but he didn’t want to break the moment, enjoying the sensation of Bucky holding him, like he had so many times before. Sure Steve wasn’t able to tuck his head against Bucky’s chest in the same way, but it suddenly didn’t matter, it felt exactly the same anyway. 

‘The bacon’s burning,’ Bucky said, breaking the moment, and Steve leapt for the pan, managing to pull it off the flame before the smoke alarm kicked in. Using those superhuman reflexes for something mundane yet extremely useful: like Bucky’s metal-arm-as-bottle-opener.

He felt better after crying, and he didn’t mind Bucky seeing a show of vulnerability. Steve had even been in a campaign last year about alphas conquering toxic masculinity. The ad agency had decided that of the team, Tony was the worst possible fit and, surprisingly, Steve was the best.

He plated the (burnt) bacon and waffles, covered them in syrup and poured Bucky a giant steaming cup of coffee.

Bucky tucked in, chancing a glance up at Steve through his hair. ‘You feeling better?’

‘Yeah, food helps,’ he said. He’d always found that, something about the act of eating forcing him to be present in his body. In those strange, strange days after the serum changed him it was one of the only things he found that grounded him. He stopped worrying about how he looked or how his body had changed, and just focused on food. Which had made the army hard, especially as he needed a lot of calories just to make it through the day in one piece. 

He watched Bucky for a while, hunched over the table, but not self-conscious of his arm at all. The other scars on his body bothered Steve a lot, though. He knew just how much damage they could withstand before even their accelerated healing gave up the ghost, and he winced just imagining what Bucky had been through. He’d forced himself to read all the leaked reports, what Hydra had done to the Winter Soldier to keep him compliant. He thought Bucky was the bravest person he knew to have withstood all that, to be peacefully eating his breakfast like he hadn’t been tortured for decades. Spooning sugar in his coffee for all the world like an average joe. 

‘How are you feeling?’ Steve asked, when he’d wolfed down the rest of his plate of food, resisted the urge to lick it clean.

‘Like I went ten rounds with you, and then a truck ran over me. And then the truck reversed over me. Before running over me again,’ Bucky’s tone was droll, but Steve knew it had to be bad for him to be complaining at all. Heat was miserable, super-serum or no. Steve had never gone into rut. Before the war he doubted he could have survived it: he had bad heart trouble, arrhythmia, palpitations, chest pains. The idea of sex for hours on end, days on end? It would have killed him. They stopped fooling around as soon as he presented, but they’d slip up occasionally right up until Bucky had disappeared, swear blind the next day that it could never happen again, that they couldn’t risk anyone finding out what they were to each other. The mating bite had been risky enough, but they’d both been on so many suppressants by that point that Bucky had convinced Steve it would be safe. During the war, he’d wanted to consummate the bond many, many times. But the risks of Bucky being found out were too great, and where were they gonna get any privacy? 

Steve reached over, placed his hand over Bucky’s. ‘I missed you.’ It was simpler than everything else he wanted to say like, ‘I know it’s been decades but it feels like a few years’ and ‘everyone else I know is dead and gone, or can’t remember me’ and ‘no one knows me like you did.’

Bucky sort of smiled, ‘I missed you.’ Maybe he knew that it was just a shorthand way of saying so much else. ‘I had a whole list of questions I was going to ask you if I ever saw you again. One minute,’ Bucky disappeared into the bedroom, came back out with a beat-up old journal, which he flicked through.

Steve sort of wished he’d put a shirt on. It was distracting. It reminded him of being a teenager, watching Bucky box, greedy eyes on him whenever he could get away with it.

‘What was your ma’s name?’ Bucky asked, shaking Steve from his thoughts. A tell-tale flush creeping over his ears.

‘Sarah,’ thinking about his mother acted like a douse of cold water.

He watched Bucky write that down, felt his heart twist.

‘Brooklyn Navy Yard? I used to work there?’

‘Yeah, and you used to cruise there,’ Steve mumbled. ‘It was how I found out you liked boys.’

‘Well there’s a thing,’ Bucky said, writing it down studiously. ‘I’d written down ‘sailors’ with a lot of exclamation points but I don’t get every memory clearly.’

Steve could smell Bucky more strongly than he had the day before. He didn’t know if it was because he was shirtless, getting closer to heat, or having a flashback about sailors. He hoped not the latter. It was hard to be around Bucky like this without touching him, but Steve had promised all he would do was look after Bucky, and Bucky had had more than enough people in his life break promises to him. Steve was not going to be just one more in a long line of them.

Bucky swayed a little and Steve was on his feet before he could help himself, arm round Bucky to support him. ‘You need to lie down, pal,’ Bucky’s scent was spiking, he smelled like candy floss and apples, or an ice cream sundae, or musky and needy, Steve couldn’t decide, he just knew he could taste him on the back of his tongue, sweet and salty both at once.

‘I thought you said my heat would start in a week,’ Bucky’s accusatory tone would have been more effective had he not rested his head on Steve’s shoulder, let him support him onto the couch.

‘Sorry, it’s not an exact science, Buck, I don’t exactly have much experience with this.’ He tucked him up tenderly. ‘I think it’s started already, I’m gonna make you a big pitcher of ice water, okay? Get you a cool flannel for your head.’

‘Okay mom,’ his sarcasm had no edge to it, his eyes already closed. Then, ‘So you never did this with someone else after you thought I was gone?’ He sounded casual, but Steve knew the question was anything but.

‘No,’ Steve said, shortly. ‘There are apps and stuff, ‘meet hot omegas in your area!’, there’s even a hotel on Coney Island, a ‘heat hotel’ it’s called, you can match with someone to help you through it.’

‘Not really your style though, huh Rogers?’ Bucky’s tone was bland but Steve didn’t fall for that.

He’d downloaded a couple of apps and browsed for a while, sort of half-heartedly. But he imagined what would happen the day after it was over, if the omega would have to be paid off, if they’d try and sell their story, and the idea of that sickened him. And however many dark-haired dark-eyed men he looked at, none of them were Bucky. So. ‘No, not really my style.’

He wiped a cold flannel over Bucky’s forehead. ‘You’re gonna get really wet soon, so I’m going to get you a towel, okay? The sites I’ve read recommend an ice-bath if it gets too much.’

‘How humiliating,’ Bucky huffed, but he leaned in to Steve’s touch nonetheless. ‘Am I gonna beg you to knot me?’

‘Yes, probably,’ Steve didn’t see any point in lying. 

‘But you won’t, right? Promise me you won’t?’ Steve could see the pulse jumping in Bucky’s throat.

‘Buck, of course I won’t. You know what my self-control is like. I managed to spend months of my life living with Tony Stark and never once punched him.’

Bucky laughed then, relaxed a little. ‘It’s not that I don’t. Well. You know.’

‘Try finishing a sentence, it’ll help me out.’

‘It’s just a lot to take in. I feel like my body’s alien enough a lot of the time, and now I’m gonna be taken over by mindless lust for a while. I don’t even remember really having sex before.’

‘I think your memories will come back, you’ve just got to give it time.’

‘I saw a counsellor for a few brief months, during a stopover in Montenegro. Turns out I can speak Montenegrin, isn’t that a kick?’

‘You’re a man of hidden depths,’ Steve sat on the floor, leaned back against the couch, made himself small, smiled when Bucky’s hand came down and stroked his head.

‘Montenegro has a messy history, right, I don’t know if they teach you European politics in superhero school but long and the short of it was the counsellor was pretty au fait with men who had killed, who were trying to come to peace with their past. It was his idea for me to write down whatever I remembered, even if it made no sense at the time. He’d get me to meditate, too, to just work hard at sitting in silence, not pushing to get the memories to rise, just waiting for them to come to me.’

‘You were always good at waiting. I was the antsy one, the impatient one.’ 

‘Yeah, you can’t be a sniper if you’re a jumpy little fucker like you,’ Bucky tugged his hair. It was the most Bucky had spoken since he’d found him again. ‘I was used to doing some of that, at least, the waiting part, so I’d try every morning as the sun rose to sit and just be with myself. Sometimes it ended with a metal fist through the wall,’ he tailed off. ‘And sometimes it ended with crying for what I’d lost, and what I couldn’t even remember losing – those gaps where happy times should be somehow even more painful than all the horrors I remembered enduring.’ He stopped then, and Steve heard him sigh. ‘You know, I got so far as bookmarking a couple of sites about hypnotherapy and memory regression before realising some flashbacks aren’t suitable for public consumption. I don’t need to call any further attention to myself.’

‘We could get you checked out by SHIELD doctors,’ Steve offered.

‘No, you’re not that naïve, Rogers. We can’t do that. But we can hope that in time it comes back. Maybe next time you won’t have to spend my heat with blue balls, that’s a goal for us both to aim for.’

‘Yeah, a real lofty goal. Getting laid is _way_ more important to me than getting you healthy again.’

Bucky was still stroking his hair, hand slow and rhythmic. ‘This reminds me of when we lived together,’ he said, dreamily. ‘We used to do this, didn’t we?’

‘Normally I’d be sketching something, but yeah,’ Steve was pleased.

‘You’d sketch me too, wouldn’t you? Sometimes the sketches would be very suggestive.’ 

Steve laughed, ‘Yes, you’d pretend to be outraged but you’d give me feedback on them. Apparently I never drew your dick as big as it really was.’

Bucky snorted, then subsided, his hand stilled. ‘I want to sleep now Steve. I want to fall asleep with a nice memory.’

Steve got up, tucked him in again. ‘I’ll be here if you need me.’

‘I’ll always need you, Steve,’ Bucky said, but so quietly Steve had to strain to hear him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's POV. Next chapter - bonjour France!

When Bucky woke from his nap to a damp patch on the couch under him he felt extremely grateful, for the first time, that this stupid apartment was entirely decorated in fucking leather and he could just wipe it down. 

Steve’s pheromones were either getting stronger, or Bucky was just reacting to them more. Like they were stuck in a feedback loop of Bucky’s heat provoking a response from Steve, which just made Bucky more turned on. ‘Steve, can you take a shower?’ he called out.

Within moments Bucky could hear the water running which let him wipe down the couch with a grimace, and change his grey sweatpants for a black, baggy pair. Ugh, he was going to have so much laundry to do once this was over.

‘Run me an ice bath once you’re done, will you?’ Bucky yelled over the running water, all politeness and awkwardness gone out the window in the face of his heat. He chugged a bottle of Gatorade and devoured a banana before grimacing and realising what he really wanted was an entire packet of Chips Ahoy! dipped in ice cream. Conveniently Steve had bought both of those things, obviously some kind of mind-reader, and Bucky tucked in, eating fairly mindlessly, like a teenaged boy going through a growth spurt. When he was done (the entire pack of cookies hadn’t really lasted long in the face of his heat-induced hunger), Steve was out and showered. He’d obviously covered himself in the pungent cologne from the bathroom, and it bothered Bucky, like spraying Lysol over the scent of baking bread. But, it also cleared his head, which was helpful.

Steve ferried the ice back and forth and then hovered awkwardly around the couch, obviously yearning to touch Bucky but not quite sure if he was allowed to do so. Bucky wasn’t even sure if Steve was allowed to do so and he decided to save that problem for later and get in the tub. He left the door ajar and stripped off. It was a shock to the system at first but then the bath felt really good. Really, really good: it cooled his skin, and his head, and also at least he didn’t have to worry about changing his fucking sweatpants every few minutes. 

His thoughts settled as he lay there, stopped swarming around inside his head like it was too small to contain them. The mark on the back of his neck throbbed, but it was a subdued backdrop while he was in the water at least. He kept having flashes of deja vu, the scent of Steve tugging around the edges of his mind. He still couldn’t remember being bonded, but there were other things: spooning Steve in the mornings and slipping his dick between his thighs, lazily rubbing off on him, and, having to lean up to steal a kiss from Steve after the serum. Or who knew, maybe these were just side effects of the heat, fever daydreams bubbling up through his poor, overheated body.

He knew that Steve was probably doing everything he could not to come through the door and take care of Bucky. It didn’t matter that Bucky couldn’t remember all of Steve: he remembered that desire to fix everything very well. He’d noticed it in the months since he’d broken control, all his research on Steve, that jutting jaw and stubborn set to his mouth as he set to fixing things for everyone. Whether they wanted him to or not. 

‘Hey Florence Nightingale, you got any more snacks?’ He didn’t quite know where this teasing tone had come from, why it felt so easy and natural to slip on, like a well-worn pair of shoes. It had taken him weeks - months - to learn how to smile at people in the grocery store, to wink at a pretty girl, not to startle if a friendly hand clapped on his shoulder at work. But this was easy, like he was reciting lines in a play, picking up every cue immediately. Maybe it was a bond thing. His hand went back to worrying at the scar absent-mindedly. He felt slightly drunk, even though he couldn’t get drunk any more, just a little bit fuzzy and loose around the edges. His dick was throbbing. He ignored it. He’d ignored worse.

‘You want a granola bar?’ Bucky could picture Steve outside, pressed right against the door. The cologne didn’t mask all of his scent and he smelled like want and protection, safe and dangerous both at once. ‘You’ve got to keep your fluid levels up, and consume a lot of calories, bud, it’s gonna take a lot out of you.’

Bucky hadn’t felt hungry in a long time but he could feel his cravings rising with his hormone levels. For weeks after he’d escaped he’d had to remind himself to eat, mindlessly consuming protein shakes. And then one day he had a slice of pizza from a kitchen which probably broke every health-code violation there was, and it was like the floodgates had opened. There was too much choice in the grocery store, and it scared him a little, but right now he was grateful for good ol’ American capitalism and the four-hundred varieties of toaster strudel you could buy. 

‘A granola bar is high in fibre and protein, so it should be the ideal snack,’ Steve said, and Bucky rolled his eyes. He sounded like he was doing a segment for high schools on improving their cafeteria choices. He told him so and was amused when Steve fell into (likely disgruntled) silence before saying, ‘Well excuse me for wanting to look after you.’ Bucky smiled to himself: it had been a long time since anyone had wanted to look after him. It stirred something suddenly. 

‘I think I remember my heat before.’

‘Yeah?’

‘The bathroom. You locked yourself in it?’

A pause. Then, ‘You kept begging me to knot you. You smelled incredible but I knew it wasn’t you talking, that you wouldn’t have wanted that.’

Bucky wanted to sink into the water and let it cover him, be reborn, the slate wiped clean. Maybe memories were overrated. He could picture it, suddenly, him hammering on the door, pleading at first, crying, mindless with it, on his knees, fingers in his ass.

‘You’ve always been a good man,’ he said, at last.

‘You’d have done the same for me. You got me my first suppressants, paid for them every month.’

‘And then I made you mate with me, just so I could get in the army.’

‘You make it sound calculated.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Bucky asked, dully.

‘Yes but it was… complex. We did it for convenience, and it might not have meant what it was supposed to, but it still meant something. We were best friends. We were good for each other.’

‘Yeah, I remember that.’ That hadn’t gone away. An easiness in Steve’s company that by all rights he shouldn’t have. Maybe it was heat, he didn’t know, maybe by next week he’d be awkward again, stilted and dry, like a dog that had been kicked one too many times.

‘If I hadn’t been sick we might have consummated it, we got close during the war but…’

‘I was scared of what it meant,’ Bucky interjected then, remembering suddenly, with a startling clarity, how he had felt like his life was over. Enlisting had been an attempt to try and get that control back over his destiny, his body, that he could still be tall and masculine and macho, not a sweet little omega tied to the kitchen sink, ruddy-faced babies clutched to his apron strings.

‘I can’t blame you for that.’ He heard the thud of all two-hundred-pounds of super soldier sitting down outside the door.

‘Did we do this?’ Bucky asked, another memory bubbling up. ‘Me yapping to you outside the bathroom, you in the tub?’

‘Yes, when I was very sick, I’d sit steaming over a bucket of boiling water, and you’d stand outside, telling me about your fights at the boxing gym, the pretty girls you were taking out that weekend, the new dance move you’d learned.’

Bucky could remember how he’d felt then, the fear over Steve’s illness, the helplessness, the way that talking and talking and talking seemed like it might be the only thing which could fend off Steve getting worse. Like if he kept up a stream of mundane babble he could keep him alive. Silly, of course, but it had felt potent. ‘I think being near you is helping my memory.’

‘It’s the bond, Buck, it does that.’

Bucky wondered how he knew, whether he’d researched it, or if he just understood the bond in a way Bucky didn’t. Bucky barely even remembered it.

The bath was warming up again, and suddenly all Bucky wanted was to get out, could feel the heat threatening to rise again. It was strange that he could have spent years with his body conditioned to run on low fuel, to sleep in the gutter, never to feel the cold, or pain, or human desire, and now his body was making itself known. Mind over matter wasn’t working any more. 

Steve was still outside the door, on his feet immediately that he saw Bucky, in one of those acts of grace that reminded Bucky how inhuman their bodies really were. Steve didn’t know where to look, clearly, well, knew where he wanted to look Bucky suspected but very purposefully dragged his eyes to Bucky’s face, his cheeks stained pink.

‘It’s getting bad, I need to lie down.’ What he needed was to get fucked, but there was no way that was happening any time soon. He suddenly became aware of how small the hallway was, how big Steve was, the idea of walking past him felt huge, like there was no way he could do it, no way he could touch Steve and not beg.

Steve closed his eyes, swayed a little. ‘I’m not going to touch you, okay, let me back up a little bit,’ and slowly, palms raised like Bucky was a startled horse, he backed up, eyes on Bucky’s the whole time.

It felt worse the further away he got, like every part of Bucky was crying out for him to ask Steve to come back, to knot him, to touch him, to hold him. He fought it down, shoved it deep down. Not now. It wasn’t happening like this. He remembered how to use his limbs, staggered to the bedroom and was on his knees on the bed within seconds, fingers inside himself and this, oh this, his body seemed to remember. He knew how to do it, how to make it feel good, not as good as Steve would, but still he could take the edge off a little.

He was so focused, one hand on his dick, his lip bitten bloody, that he didn’t even hear the door click shut, nor the sound of Steve leaning back against it, like a sentry standing watch.

*** 

The next day came to him in fits and starts, all of them punctuated by his fingers inside himself, coming dry by the end, unable to do anything except struggle through it as silently as he could. Steve’s scent was a constant, and he could almost feel his worry, as well as scent just how much Steve wanted to fuck him. Steve smelled so good to him, promising all of his favourite things like a Lucky Strike shared in a dugout, a cold shower on a hot day, a book and a blanket in Central Park. His scent promised a lot more than that, too, a musky, dirty promise that he could taste on the air. 

He wanted to get back in the ice bath but he didn’t trust himself to be that close to Steve again, worried he would start shamelessly begging, filthy words to try and make Steve give him what he wanted. He kept picturing Steve putting him on his hands and knees and knotting him, how that would feel. And that just got him even more worked up. 

The heat finally subsided when it was dark outside. He was lying in bed, wincing at the touch of his hand on his dry dick, and then suddenly he was himself again. He shuddered into a final orgasm and lay back on the (frankly disgusting) sheets, panting. 

‘You want a shower?’ Steve was there right away, calling through the door, must have felt it break. ‘I’m going to go out for a walk around the block, I’ll only be five minutes.’

Bucky considered whether he should make a break for it in those five minutes before realising that in his current condition he’d probably only make it to the local bodega and Steve would catch him and do something humiliating like carry him back over his shoulder. And Bucky would probably do something humiliating like enjoy it. He didn’t really want to run from Steve, not right now.

‘Okay pal, you want to take my laundry for me? These sheets should probably be burned but…’ he wrinkled his nose looking at them.

‘Bundle them outside the room and I’ll take care of it. I’ll bring back some donuts, one of those pumpkin spice lattes the young people like.’

Bucky smiled, then winced as he stood, every part of his body aching as he roughly yanked the sheets off the bed. He imagined Steve would probably get quite a lot of stares carrying them, if any alphas were passing at least. But knowing Steve, he’d probably punch out anyone who said anything. Or maybe that was the old days, when he was little. He was probably more circumspect now he was a superhero… and now that people could take pictures on their cell-phones. Captain America punching someone out in a fight about laundry would trend on twitter pretty fucking quickly.

He waited until he felt the door click closed before he did some yoga stretches, wrapped a towel around his waist. The back of his neck was no longer tingling, it just felt like it always did, a lump of scar tissue no different from any of the others which dotted his body. After the shower he felt better, his slick running down the plughole, soaping himself up repeatedly until he was squeaky clean.

It was only after he’d dried, dressed himself, eaten a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and given up trying to do pull-ups on the bar in the bedroom doorway, that he started to worry where Steve was. He’d said five minutes. This had been around twenty-three, give or take a few seconds.

He wasn’t sure why he cared if Steve was coming back or not. It would be a lot easier if he didn’t come back: he could just carry on with his plan of heading to France, staying out of the sight of whoever would want to bring him in for questioning, and generally trying to evade public attention. And Steve was very good at drawing public attention. Even without the stupid shield he insisted on carrying there was something in the set of his shoulders and that bright blond hair. It would all round be better if Steve didn’t come back. Then Bucky could disappear again, and never have to deal with the whole being an omega thing. Sure he’d gone into heat but that was an aberration, surely, and the further he was away from Steve the less likely he’d be to trigger anything like that again. He knew they must have covered some of this crap in health ed, but he also knew he’d probably not paid attention to it, the idea that _he_ would be omega laughable back then. It still sort of was funny to him, which was something he obviously needed to unpack. He could add it to a long, long list.

When Steve walked back through the door he felt immediate relief, which he put down to the bond. Nothing more than that. Just pure biology.

‘You were gone for a while,’ he said, extremely casually, deliberately busying himself with a cup of coffee.

‘Yeah, I didn’t mean to be, there was this enormous queue at the laundromat and there was an alpha in there who kept making comments and-’

‘You punched him?’

‘I _wanted_ to punch him, but no, I decided that actually, the bedsheets could go in the nearest skip, and I could buy some more to replace it. And then I got you some sweatpants, and some boots. I might have got carried away.’ Steve gestured to the bags surrounding him.

Bucky quirked an eyebrow, ‘You took out shares in H&M?’

‘I got the donuts, and I bought hair-dye too,’ Steve ignored him, crouching down to rifle through the bags. ‘I’m too blond, too noticeable. I need to be more nondescript. I’ll let my beard grow in – and before you say it, yes, I _can_ grow a beard now – dirty brown hair, a baseball cap. I can blend in.’

‘Huh,’ Bucky leaned back against the wall, arms folded. Calm exterior but heart racing. ‘So you’re coming with me?’

Steve suddenly looked unsure of himself for a moment but then seemed to shrug it off. ‘Yes, not in an official capacity of course, but if Hydra are still out there it’s my duty to stamp them out.’

‘That’s the only reason?’ Bucky raised an eyebrow. ‘Even if I never remember our bond, you’re okay with that?’

‘I won’t _like_ it but hell, I’ve dealt with worse. I watched you date any number of betas while wearing my mark.’ Steve looked like he was about to say something else but then thought better of it. Bucky felt a sick twist in his gut. He’d spent a long time running from who he was, from what he was. 

Maybe it was time to stop running.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's POV for this chapter.

Steve could tell the precise moment Bucky’s heat broke. The scent in the apartment went from overpowering to faded and subdued right away. He willed his throbbing erection down and asked Bucky if he wanted a shower, anything to try and rinse some of that delicious smell away: it was torturous, being this close to him, the first time in years, but not being able to do anything about it.

What Steve wanted was to stick his head under the faucet until all the heat in his blood drained away but he promised Bucky that he’d do the laundry, get some food, and that he’d only be gone a few minutes, tops. He needed to call Sam, too. He didn’t want to go far while Bucky was in this state, but if he didn’t get some fresh air he was probably going to do something he’d regret.

New York never smelled particularly good but he was never more grateful for the mix of garlic, diesel and the faint smell of sewage than right then. Bucky’s smell had clogged the apartment, had got under his skin in a way he’d never known possible. Bucky had always smelled good to him, even before they presented, before they even _had_ scents: all warm and musky and faintly of cigarette smoke and cologne. But the last couple of days? It had called out to every alpha instinct he pretended he didn’t have, had made him want to knot Bucky, to seal their bond, to stop him suffering alone. Every moan, every bitten off gasp, had given him a million images he didn’t want to have to deal with, of what Bucky was doing in there. He was fairly confident his balls had turned blue, and fallen off, at some point in the last twenty-four hours, that was how bad it had been. But he’d stayed true to his word, stayed away from Bucky, not given into his animal instincts, and done something they’d both regret later.

He called Sam as he waited on the sidewalk for the lights to change, deciding that a ticket for jaywalking was the last thing he needed. ‘It’s me, Steve,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Sam’s tone was amused. ‘I have your number saved. You okay?’

‘I’m fine. He’s got his memory back, or most of it. You know this whole time we’ve been chasing him he’s been chasing after Hydra?’

‘He’s not under their control any more, not at all?’ He sounded sceptical. Which was hardly surprising.

‘No, he’s… lost. He’s like me, a man out of time. He’s getting his memories back, hell, he’s even been going to therapy.’

‘Which is more than you’re doing.’

‘I’m just burying it all down as far as it can go, that’s the healthy way to deal with it. Dum Dum used to call it ‘stiff upper lip’.’

‘Well it sounds pretty stupid to me but hey, what would I know, I’m just someone who works with veterans every day. What would I know about the benefits of therapy.’

‘Shit!’ Steve dodged a man walking seven (seven!) Pomeranians.

‘It was just an idea.’

‘Sorry,’ he glared at the man who seemed oblivious to the tripping hazard of their numerous leads. ‘There are a lot of small dogs in New York. I nearly fell.’

‘That would be quite an image: Captain America taken down by a chihuahua. Or maybe you just hated the counselling idea _that_ much that throwing yourself on the ground seemed a better idea than dealing with it.’

‘I’ll add it to my very long to-do list, right after wiping out Hydra and helping my best friend get his memories back. I can’t leave him, me being here is helping, talking to him is prodding more memories, I can see the man he used to be is there.’

‘Is that true, or just wishful thinking?’

Steve looked down, without thinking, at the bag of sheets in his hand. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘So what, you’re roommates with him now? Give him a manbun and you’ll just pass him off as a hipster you met at, what, SoulCycle classes?’

‘You know they kicked me out of SoulCycle after I broke that bike,’ Steve said, evenly, pleased when Sam laughed. Bit his lip. ‘I’m going with him to hunt down Hydra.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. He saw a group of teenagers clustered outside the subway spot him and balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder, gave them a cheery wave and a salute. Sam was still silent. 

‘You have to say something at some point.’

‘You’re not gonna like what I have to say.’

Steve sighed, ‘Probably not, but we’re friends, I didn’t want to lie to you. You’ll say it’s a bad idea, that we don’t know if he can be trusted, that maybe it’s a trap and he’s luring me there to have Hydra kill me.’

‘Sounds like you don’t even need me on the end of this call, if you can do such a good impression of what I’m about to say.’

‘I’m not an idiot.’

There was a pause.

‘Even though you think I’m acting like one.’

‘Are you gonna tell Natasha?’ Sam asked. His tone was, well, _triumphant_ was the best way to describe it, like he was placing down a winning Blackjack hand. 

‘Why would I need to tell Natasha?’ Steve went for innocent.

Sam snorted. ‘Why indeed?’

‘She’ll find out anyway, I don’t need to be the one to tell her.’ The laundromat was at the end of the block and he picked up his pace, anxious to have a reason to end the call. ‘I have to go now, but I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise I’ve thought this through. I’ll check in with you each day so you know where I am.’

‘And what about the others? You know Tony will ask.’

‘Tony doesn’t need to know everything, even if he thinks he does. He can know I’m on the hunt for Hydra, that I’m in contact with Fury, but that I don’t want to make it a big dramatic thing.’

‘What makes you think Tony would turn it into a big dramatic thing?’ Sam’s tone was wry, which was how Steve knew he’d been (semi) forgiven. ‘I don’t like this, but I’m not going to stop you. Hell, I couldn’t if I tried, I don’t know if you know this, but you’re pretty fucking strong.’

Steve couldn’t help letting sincerity leak into his voice, even as he tried for flippant. ‘You’re a very good friend. Your support means a lot to me.’

‘You’re an idiot, but you’re _our_ idiot. Captain Idiot.’

‘Bye.’ Steve hung up the phone, shoved it in his back pocket so he could push open the heavy laundromat door. 

Most people were betas, nowadays, to the degree that families often threw parties if their kid presented as alpha. Omega? Not so much. He hadn’t been lying when he told Bucky that a lot of the old prejudices were gone, but some still remained. It was hard to talk about omegas without people picturing a submissive home-body who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And some omegas were like that, and there was nothing wrong with that, but a lot weren’t. Steve had made it one of his missions to support omega charities. Nothing overt – he couldn’t deal with the unwanted publicity – but he gave money to organisations who tried to combat problematic messaging in advertising, tried to improve education around alphas and omegas. It was still legal in some states to either not deal with the subject at all in school, or to teach hopelessly outdated stereotypes. Luckily for Steve, no one else in the laundromat was an alpha, or an omega, or at least nobody was an unbonded one. Bonded alphas and omegas were typically as bland to his nose as betas: it was only unbonded ones who he could scent. And most unbonded alphas or omegas were on suppressants, so it was much harder to pick them out. Bucky was bonded (but only half-bonded, Steve admitted to himself), and he wasn’t on any suppressants – didn’t remember enough to know he should be – so for all Steve knew he was just waving a scent-rich beacon in everyone’s direction.  
He didn’t care about running into alphas or omegas normally, knew that they were rare, still, but common enough that he’d come across them most days in such a big city. But today, the idea of someone else being able to taste Bucky’s heat made him feel really uncomfortable. Bucky shouldn’t have been able to go into random heat that week either, so Steve wasn’t really feeling overly confident about no one picking up on it. 

He kept nervously jiggling the quarters in his pocket, waiting for a machine to free up, which was why he didn’t notice the guy behind him at first. It was only after a moment or two that he realised he was even talking to him. Steve turned around, immediately polite, impeccably media-trained. ‘Excuse me, sir?’ And then the scent hit him, and he wrinkled his nose. Great.

The man was dressed solely in denim – jacket, jeans – and big workman’s boots that had never seen a day’s work in their life. He was youngish, and handsome, probably, or would have been under any other circumstances, with a strong jaw and a shaved head. ‘I was just saying those sheets smell pretty good,’ he grinned easily, a lot of white teeth. Shark-like.

That was just _rude_. Steve knew that nowadays people had more relaxed standards of conversation, could talk about sex, or orientation, or whatever, but even so… this was a total stranger. ‘Hmm,’ he was noncommittal, softened it with a smile and turned back around, praying that the woman who was taking forever to remove her laundry would pick it up a pace.

The man tapped him on the shoulder. Steve deliberately relaxed his jaw, softened his shoulders. ‘I’ve never been with an omega in heat before, what’s it like?’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively, rocking forward into Steve’s personal space. ‘I’ve heard they get soaked, go all needy. I really want to try it but my girlfriend won’t come off her suppressants, it’s a real fucken drag. How’d you persuade yours?’

Steve swallowed down the urge to punch him and decided, on balance, that he could afford new sheets. That woman was still removing her clothes from the machine and he would knock the guy out if he had to stand there for another ten, okay, five minutes listening to him.

‘I’m surprised you’ve even made it out of there, I’d have knotted her so hard we’d have been tied for days. How’d you get away?’ His gaze was lascivious, his smile suddenly too much to handle, creepy in its intensity. 

‘You, are a jackass,’ Steve said, eventually, and pushed past him to the exit, the smells of detergent and the heat of the place suddenly feeling overwhelming.

‘Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it!’ the man called after him. Steve flipped him the bird, slammed the door after him, winced when he saw a hairline crack in the glass start, then spread into a spiderweb of fractures. He turned his back. He’d drop by tomorrow, pay the owner off. But not today. He bundled the sheets into a nearby dumpster and felt immediately better without the low-level scent around. His instincts were too close to the surface. What he needed was to get back to the apartment and jerk off in the shower until he’d washed all traces of Bucky’s heat from under his skin. 

Instead, what he was going to do was buy donuts, and fancy coffee, and a new wardrobe for the next stage of his life: hunting down Hydra with Bucky.

*** 

The stores were – as they always were – overwhelming and stressful, packed full of tourists buying overpriced marked-up crap and hipsters doing the same. He bought two pairs of boots from an army surplus store, plus a load of flannel, then ended up in H&M to buy basics. 

Sweatpants, A-shirts (why the hell not, maybe undercover-Steve was a redneck), and boxers all went in his basket. He presumed Bucky was the same size as him. He’d seen a lot of Bucky the last couple of days. All of him, in fact, and the memory of his naked body lurked around the edges of Steve’s subconscious. He refused to engage with it, it felt vaguely disrespectful, like being a peeping-Tom, so it was easiest to just keep busy, browse the store, and definitely not imagine any of the clothes on Bucky’s body, or how they would fit him.

His next stop was a drugstore where he bought box dye, antiseptic, a rudimentary First Aid kit and (embarrassingly) a lube for alphas which promised to ‘feel just like an omega!’ At least his jerking off session could be a bit fancier than usual. And finally donuts and coffee, like he’d promised before he left. He checked his watch. Crap. He’d been gone over an hour, and he’d said five minutes. He hastened his step back towards the apartment building.

He could still smell Bucky all the way down the corridor but it wasn’t as strong as before. But his knees still felt weak, like they could buckle at any moment, and he steeled himself before letting himself in.

Bucky was clean and dressed, hair tied back, longer than Steve was used to it being but he liked it. He liked being able to see Bucky’s jaw, his face, no longer hidden behind a wall of hair. He looked relieved to see Steve, before reassembling his features back into something more neutral. 

Bucky leaned against the wall as Steve explained everything he’d bought, that his plan was that he would join Bucky on his mission. Bucky’s scent was neutral, and it was only when Steve referenced how he’d watched Bucky date betas while wearing his mark that he visibly winced. Steve tried to think of something to say, something to soothe the sting away: he hadn’t meant to sound acerbic. But there was nothing he could say. It was true. He’d loved Bucky, he’d wanted them to be mates in the truest sense of the word, and Bucky hadn’t wanted that. Or maybe Bucky had wanted it, he just didn’t think he was allowed to have it, or worried about what ‘it’ was. Steve thought about all those adverts, perfect families with fertile omegas beaming out, hand-in-hand with their children. Whereas Bucky was all moody pout and dancing eyes, sense of mischief and a devil-may-care tilt to his chin.

‘We used to make a good team,’ Bucky said, carefully, crouching down to help Steve unpack, taking the coffees out of the paper bag, stealing a bite from a donut.

‘We did, and we will again. I’ll have to polish up my French though.’

‘Hey, all you need to know is the words for hello, goodbye and two beers please.’ He licked some sugar off his thumb and Steve felt his throat grow dry, swallowed, looked down.

‘What about the French for ‘where are the bad guys’?’ His tone was deliberately light.

Bucky grinned, ‘Où sont Hydra?’

Steve reached out, took a cup from him and got up, leaving the chaos on the floor behind them to sit on the couch. ‘Jacques Dernier taught us a lot of French.’

‘I remember,’ Bucky bumped his knee, a grin splitting his face at the fact he _had_ a firm grip on a memory. ‘Mostly it was blue, though. I have a lot of swear words. And _voulez-vous coucher avec moi?_ ’

Steve knew he wasn’t actually inviting him but he felt the tell-tale flush trace over his cheekbones anyway. He took a long gulp of coffee, then winced at how hot it was.

‘You’re feeling better then?’ he asked, mostly so he had something to say that wasn’t suggestive.

‘Yeah, I am. Pretty great. I wouldn’t want to go through that again, though, makes me realise why I was on suppressants all that time.’

‘Bonded omegas aren’t supposed to be able to go into spontaneous heat. You’re only supposed to be sparked off by my rut.’

‘You ever have one of those?’ Bucky asked, curiously.

Steve blew on the coffee, ‘No, we’re mated, so even if I wasn’t on suppressants I can’t see anyone else setting it off.’

‘I remember picking up your suppressants,’ Bucky said suddenly. ‘Sometimes if you were tired or too sick I’d go and get them for you. This snide little shit that ran errands for the doctor asked me once why an omega was buying alpha suppressants and I knocked his teeth out.’

Steve laughed, ‘That does sound like something you’d do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bucky said, then, deliberately not looking at Steve. ‘For dating betas in front of you. It was unkind.’

‘You can’t help who you’re attracted to,’ Steve said, awkward suddenly. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants!’ He tried for flippant and came out somewhere west of ‘sour’.

‘I like women too, I like betas, and omegas, but, I also liked you. I didn’t know what to do with it, once I presented. A lot of it was pretending,’ Bucky said, looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. ‘I did a lot of pretending that I wasn’t omega. That I could be that alpha stereotype, sowing my seeds, breaking hearts, getting in fights.’

‘Being omega doesn’t mean you can’t do that. Hell, when I presented, you were the only person who didn’t laugh at me – tiny, chronically ill, invisible to men and women alike, and an _alpha_?’

Bucky rubbed his thumb over Steve’s knuckles, not even a caress really, though Steve shivered nonetheless, ‘You were never invisible to me, Steve. Or to that dame, what was her name, Peggy?’

‘Peggy. She’s still alive you know but her dementia is real bad.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘She had a long life, she wouldn’t want your pity. She was alpha too. I liked her a lot, I visit her sometimes, still, but we could never have worked. Not when I was so hung up on you.’

‘Wow I was an asshole,’ Bucky said suddenly, with a grimace. He handed Steve a donut like it was a peace offering. ‘I remember bits of it, I can’t pretend I don’t. But it’s like I don’t have the full story. I can guess why I acted that way, but that doesn’t make it right. I should never have made you bite me.’

‘It wasn’t a hardship,’ Steve smiled. He remembered that night, Bucky knelt in front of him, neck bared. The reverence he felt. That despite Bucky’s protestations that it was just to enable him to enlist, it felt so much weightier. ‘I just didn’t want it to be a bond of convenience. I wanted it to be real.’

‘Well, I’m sorry I was such a jerk, playing with your feelings like that was shitty.’ He bit his lip, took another slurp of coffee. ‘It’s like that 12-step thing, I keep feeling like I’ve gotta make amends for everything I did before. There’s a long list of grieving people I need to apologise to, but I don’t think ‘sorry I assassinated your dad, I was brainwashed’ is gonna cut it. Best I can do now is destroy the rest of Hydra,’ he said, as if it was just as easy as pie, clenched and unclenched his metal hand. It was strange for Steve to watch, though he imagined in time he’d become used to it, would see it as just one more piece of the puzzle of Bucky.

Steve yawned, the long night standing outside Bucky’s door catching up with him. Even the combination of coffee and sugar syrup and cream not doing anything for once. He’d got way too used to a comfortable bed, eight hours of sleep. He’d forgotten who he used to be, able to sleep anywhere, his helmet tipped over his eyes, folded up in the back of a moving truck, standing propped against a wall of a shelter, wherever, whenever he could. 

‘You want a nap, buddy?’ Bucky moved to take his cup. ‘I can sort through all the crap you bought. Capitalist America at its finest!’ He put on a strong Russian accent and Steve laughed, despite himself, before that too turned into a yawn. ‘Let me make up the bed, least I can do after you took care of me. Sorry if I was embarrassing.’ He threw a smile in Steve’s direction like he had no cares in the world but Steve could see right through it.

‘You weren’t embarrassing,’ he said, standing up, taking Bucky’s hands so he had to look at him. ‘What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t help you through something like that?’

‘It’s a loose definition of friendship you got, I doubt most guys would watch the door during their friend’s heat.’ Bucky’s eyes skated away from Steve’s, ended up somewhere around his collarbones.

‘I’ve never been most guys,’ Steve said, simply, letting go of Bucky’s hands, watching him head into the bedroom to change the sheets.

Steve checked his phone: he had a text from Sam and it was a screenshot from twitter. Someone had photographed him flipping off that jackass alpha in the laundromat, and written ‘Cap having a bad day?’ Steve knew it was probably only a matter of time before the other guy talked, and then there would be a whole thing about the omega sheets. Which, actually, he considered, was quite a good cover. If he could get over the mortification of it, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea that people thought he was holed up somewhere with an omega. Society still feted alphas, in a weird way, and it could probably be spun into some story about Steve being protective, blah blah blah. It could help cover things for a while.

He knew he’d probably get a call shortly from his doctor, and from someone in PR, so he typed out a quick ‘Hi Sam, It’s fine, I’ll fix it. Regards, Steve’ and then silenced his phone.

Bucky was standing in the bedroom doorway. ‘The sheets are done. The mirror on the ceiling is pretty weird, I’ll warn you, but I bet you’re tired enough not to even notice that. Whoever lives here usually is a swinger, I guarantee you.’

‘We shouldn’t judge other people for their lifestyles,’ Steve said primly, but with a grin, which Bucky returned.

‘There used to be a guy who lived across from us who was a swinger, right?’

‘Yeah, him and his wife, Mr and Mrs Josephson. We’d see the couples go in, and then laugh ourselves stupid the next morning when they let themselves out, hair mussed up and looking so nervous someone was going to spot them.’

‘I remember that,’ Bucky looked pleased. 

Steve wanted to kiss him then, just at the corner of his mouth, to feel him gasp, see if he’d kiss Steve back. But, he’d promised not to push anything. So. ‘I’ll just take a couple of hours rest, you’ll be okay here?’

‘I’m not gonna run again, pal. I’ve come around to the idea of having a sidekick.’

Steve snorted, poked Bucky in the ribs until Bucky squirmed away, laughing. ‘You seem better.’

‘Heat was bad, I’m practically fucking euphoric now that’s over. And, I can remember more stuff with you around. Memories used to come in dribs and drabs but it’s like you just turned on the faucet in my mind, they’re all crowding in. I don’t like all of ‘em but… they’re mine.’

‘I’ll see you in an hour or two,’ he squeezed Bucky’s wrist, pulled his shirt over his head and kicked his jeans off in pretty much one move, desperate to sleep, as exhausted as he could remember being in years. He crawled in between the sheets, noting with a modicum of disappointment that they didn’t smell of Bucky. And then he was out like a light.

*** 

When he woke up it was like he’d gone back in time. He recognised the song Bucky was playing in the kitchen, and the apartment smelled of – cheap – coffee.

He walked out barefoot. Bucky was rinsing some plates, humming to himself. He smiled when he saw Steve. ‘You recognise this song? Or should I jog your memory for once?’

‘It’s Will Hudson,’ he remembered suddenly, Bucky bringing home a beat-up gramophone and tinkering with it until he could coax a tune out of it. Steve had bought the record as a gift for him, a shellac 78. It was like he could feel a trapdoor opening in his mind, recalling it so viscerally. ‘Definition of Swing, the first record I ever bought.’

Bucky looked delighted, straddled a chair and rested his chin on the back of it, his foot tapping. ‘We listened to it all the time, practically wore it out. I used to try and teach you to dance. You were-’

‘Extremely bad,’ Steve cut in, so Bucky didn’t have to say it.

‘I was gonna say ‘enthusiastic’ but yeah, you sucked.’

‘I haven’t danced in years, I probably can’t remember how.’

‘Me neither, that I can remember. I don’t know, maybe they dressed the Winter Soldier up in a monkey suit now and then, sent him to functions full of dignitaries before he killed someone. But that’s just what the internet says, I don’t remember it, I read it but it doesn’t even ring a bell most of the time. But _this_ ,’ he gestured to his iphone, ‘this music makes me feel like I’m there again. I can smell the apartment like it used to be, that camphor you had on your chest.’

‘And your bryl-cream,’ Steve added. He wanted to hug Bucky, to say ‘welcome back’ and ‘it’s going to be okay now’ but he didn’t dare. He realised, self-consciously, that he was still only wearing boxers. Bucky obviously realised at the same moment, shaken out of the reverie of his music, and looking slightly pink all of a sudden. 

‘I should go shower,’ he said at the same time Bucky said, ‘I should make some more coffee.’

‘Shower first, then coffee,’ Steve said. ‘And then we make a plan.’

‘I did that when you were asleep,’ Bucky said, seriously, gesturing to his MacBook. ‘I’ve found commercial flights out of JFK tomorrow, we’ll land in Paris and get the train to Calais. We can stay in a little boarding house I’ve found, round the corner from where Hydra’s running its little shipping operation.’

‘Won’t it be suspicious if we fly together?’ Steve said. ‘I get so much scrutiny, and if I need a passport…’

Bucky rolled his eyes, ‘Wow, you really are still a dumbass. You’re not flying as Steve Rogers.’ He pulled a passport from his jean pocket, threw it at Steve who caught it easily.

His name was, for now at least, Peter Falcone. There was no photograph. ‘I need you to dye your hair first,’ Bucky said, like he’d read Steve’s mind. ‘It’s hardly a foolproof cover but it will do. Just say ‘hail Hydra’ if you get stuck.’

Steve let out a shocked laugh. ‘It feels weird to be doing this.’

‘Cold feet?’ Bucky had tensed, almost imperceptibly, but Steve was used to reading him.

‘No, not at all. It’s just different. I’m usually in a private jet, I have some concerns about the leg-room.’

Bucky’s smile was relieved, but he disguised it by getting up, putting the coffee pot on again. ‘Go shower, then I need you to go out and get me some kind of suppressant. I know I’m not supposed to be able to go into spontaneous heat but I’m not going through that again on the plane, okay?’

‘You still want to see a doctor? I can try and find you one, get an urgent appointment.’

‘Let me think about it. See how I go with the suppressant.’

That reminded Steve to check his phone, then, and he winced at the number of missed calls from his doctor. He sent her a quick email, ‘Dear Doctor Agarwal, Can I come in this afternoon? I want to explain. Also, I need some omega suppressants, which I also know I will need to explain. Regards, Steve.’ She wrote back so quickly he thought it was an auto-responder at first. ‘4 o’clock in my office.’

‘I should take your number, in case I get held up,’ Steve said, gesturing at the iPhone which was still playing tinny jazz.

‘Sure. Hey, you’ll be the first contact since I picked this one up. I don’t really get many messages.’ He punched in Steve’s number and called him quickly, cancelling it once Steve nodded that he had it.

It was only once he was in the bathroom, stripping off, that he realised that Bucky really had put everything away from the bags. Which meant that his lube was there, placed neatly next to the rest of the toiletries. 

*** 

The doctor’s office had a really neutral scent, which he was grateful for, after the cacophony of smells that had been assaulting him the past couple of days. 

Dr Agarwal, Nita, had been extremely uncomfortable during their conversation. Talking about Captain America’s sex-life was pretty much above everyone’s pay-grade and yet there they were. 

‘We’ve had you on suppressants for some time, and no problems?’

‘No, none at all. No rut. Nothing.’

‘So the sheets…?’

‘Not really any of your business.’

‘Well it is my business if you nearly got in a fight over them. That sort of alpha posturing is normally linked to a spike in your hormone cycle, and you’re not really supposed to _have_ a hormone cycle any more. So the posturing on its own would concern me, but the posturing combined with – according to the witness statement ‘omega’s heat sheets’ – makes me think that either you were in rut and told no one, or the omega’s heat has triggered something.’ Her eyes behind her glasses were large and brown, solemn-looking. She was a beta, she didn’t _get_ it, Steve thought, then felt guilty. She was a nice woman. She’d survived the purge of SHIELD, and he was grateful for the continuity at least. It was humiliating enough talking about this stuff, let alone with a stranger. Nita was funny. She made him laugh when she took his bloods, and she teased him, gently, at how much he’d blush when they had a consultation. 

‘I’m happy to try other suppressants if you want but the argument was nothing to do with the omega. I just think people nowadays are really rude. It’s inappropriate to ask someone those kinds of questions. And you like my alpha instincts – it’s part of me being Captain America, standing up for justice and all that.’ He gave her his ‘media’ smile, which he’d learned over the years: bland, with a tinge of self-righteousness.

‘And you spent a heat with an omega?’ When he didn’t answer immediately she said, ‘Oh and don’t even think about flipping me off, Steve, I won’t stand for it.’

He tipped his head back, exhaled normally. ‘I spent a heat with an omega, yes. Which, if I recall correctly, I am perfectly within my rights to do. I’m on suppressants. He was consenting.’ Steve figured a white lie was okay, sure they hadn’t actually had sex, but revealing it was his mate, that he even had a mate, would make for too many questions. ‘I’d like to get some suppressants for him, though. He shouldn’t have gone into heat like that, I wondered if you could help?’

‘Yes because you have done _such_ a good job of buttering me up so far today, Steve. Your endless politeness and that really annoying smug smile you do have really made me want to write you a fake prescription.’

Steve snorted, despite himself. ‘I’m sorry for being an asshole. I just didn’t sleep well. His heat was pretty bad, and I’m exhausted. And that guy was such a dick!’

She looked at him, long and cool, then sighed. ‘Fine, although your omega friend probably needs to be checked out by a doctor. And if you even develop a hint of a rut I want you right back in here. If you _do_ want to experience a rut, that’s your prerogative, but I don’t want you getting in fights. It’s never going to be a fair fight with you, is it.’

Steve was chastened. ‘No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I’ll tell him to see a doctor, do you have any recommendations?’

‘Sure, there’s an omega doctor in Queens’. Doctor Breathnach.’

Steve flinched, ‘I used to get my pills from a Doctor Breathnach nearly a century ago.’

She looked up from her writing, ‘it’s a family practice, she’ll take good care of your _friend_.’ She rolled the word around in her mouth a while, looked hard at Steve who broke first, looked at his feet. ‘You want me to drop him a line, see if he can fit your omega in?’

‘He’s not _my_ omega,’ Steve muttered. He wished. ‘But yes, please.’

She picked up the phone, made some polite chit-chat for a while, then wrote down an address and a time.

‘That was her private line: she can see your friend today, I presume it’s urgent. He needs to say that Nita Agarwal arranged it, okay? And when will I next see you?’

‘A month or two,’ he was deliberately vague. ‘I’m going away for a little bit, superhero business.’

‘Sure, or for a dirty weekend I imagine,’ she was unfussed, signed her name and ripped off the prescription for him, pushed it over to him along with the address. ‘I’ll give you a month’s worth of new tablets, and the same for him. Tell the doctor what he’s taking.’

He folded it carefully, tucked it into his wallet, and smiled his thanks to her. ‘Be careful,’ she said. She stood up. Standing, she was still tiny, and bird-like, her black hair shot through with grey. She squeezed his arm. ‘I mean it.’

‘Roger that,’ he saluted. He’d try to be careful, but it was pretty hard in his line of work.

*** 

Natasha was standing outside Bucky’s building when he got back. He could have spotted her a mile away even though she was doing her best inconspicuous impression: beanie on, leggings and sneakers, could have been any number of Brooklynites out for a stroll. Only she wasn’t, she was deadly, and she was probably about to verbally kick his ass.

‘You spoke to Sam?’ Steve said, by way of hello. ‘Let me put my bags down at least before you start yelling.’

‘I did speak to Sam, but I already knew you were here. Captain America nearly gets into a fist fight in a Brooklyn laundromat, with an alpha no less, and I’m not going to notice?’

He let out a deep sigh. ‘Can we sit down?’

She pointed her thumb at the Beekman. ‘Their tea is extremely expensive, so I think it’s the least you can do.’

‘Let me text Bucky.’

‘Oh so he’s Bucky now is he? Not the Winter Soldier or the man who left you to die?’

Steve looked longingly at the apartment building, those few rooms where it felt like he didn’t need to pretend, to explain himself, to lie to anyone. ‘Yes, he’s Bucky,’ he said. ‘Don’t be so black and white about everything Natasha, it doesn’t suit you.’

Her eyebrows rose so far into her hairline he could barely see them any longer. ‘I’m the black and white one! I’m the black and white one!’ She turned to a bemused passer-by and said, ‘This guy has got a real sense of humour if he thinks I’m the black and white one.’

‘Sure lady,’ the man said, hastening his step without a backward glance.

The doorman at the Beekman gestured them both in and Natasha grinned obnoxiously widely at him. ‘Do you have lots of really expensive pastries?’

‘We do,’ he tipped his hat.

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Come on Rogers, let me bankrupt you via the medium of sugar.’

It was only once she’d stirred several spoons of jam into her tea – a disgusting habit, Steve thought – that she let the tension puncture by beginning to berate him. Steve tuned out after a minute or two. He’d heard it all from Sam, hell, he’d told himself it over the past couple of days. But he didn’t get where he was by doubting himself and fundamentally he knew that Bucky was himself again. Not whole, not by any means as yet, but he was Steve’s Bucky at heart: sarcastic, and handsome, and kind. Not the inhuman weapon they had tried to turn him into.

He tuned back in as she was saying, ‘… and I’ll need to tell Tony.’

‘No fucking way,’ he said.

‘Steve! Did you just _swear_?’ She seemed shocked, but amused.

‘I fucking did, and I fucking will again if you tell Tony. You know, Sam knows, and that’s where I want it to stop. I’ll get a message to Fury somehow but I don’t want it wider than that. You’ll know where I am, and if anything goes wrong, you’ll know to come and get me, okay?’

‘Hmm,’ she blew on her tea. ‘And what about that mystery omega of yours? Most of the bystanders in the laundromat didn’t know what the row was over, but there was a bonded omega there, and she got pretty chatty after I bought her an iced tea.’ She met his gaze square on, smiled sweetly. Then the smile dropped. ‘Oh shit, Bucky’s the mystery omega isn’t he, that’s why you’re so sure he’s safe now?’

Steve contemplated lying about it for approximately twenty seconds and then remembered who he was dealing with. ‘Yeah. We were bond-mates.’

She let out a long, low whistle. ‘Well, shit.’

‘Eloquent as ever.’

‘It explains a lot,’ she said, then, contemplating the surface of her tea very intently. ‘Why you didn’t fight back, why he saved you, why you trust him.’

‘That’s not all of it by a longshot, but, yes.’

‘Well they certainly don’t talk about _that_ in the history books.’

‘Thank god,’ Steve said. ‘A chapter on Captain America knotting his best friend, Bucky Barnes!’

She choked on her tea, swallowed it, eyes watering. ‘I’ve never heard you talk like this before.’

‘Bucky’s a bad influence.’ He shrugged. ‘I missed him, a lot. He’s the only link to the past I have, and he was so much more than just my childhood friend.’

‘Does anyone else know?’ 

‘No, it’s not really my secret to tell, and I don’t want people to feel bad for me.’

She reached for his hand, squeezed it. ‘You don’t get to stop me feeling sorry for you, the whole thing is a complete mess. And now you’re going to run all over the world with him, fighting bad guys, putting things to rights?’

He smiled, tightly. ‘I guess.’

‘And what about when it ends, when you have to come home? When we need you?’

‘We can figure it out. Bucky can’t go back into custody, it’d kill him, it’d kill _me_. But Fury always was good at those grey areas, and if I trust Bucky I don’t see why the rest of you can’t.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Let’s give it a few months. See how these missions go, how he handles himself, and if you come back here in three months and tell me you’re well, that he’s good, then we don’t have to publicly announce him or anything, but what’s one more man in a mask amongst friends?’

Steve’s heart lifted. ‘You think?’

‘We’ll make it work. You just go get stuck into your crazy scheme, I’ll make contact with Fury and who knows? Maybe I can come be third wheel hunting Hydra. I’ve not been back to Russia for a while.’

‘It’s France first,’ Steve said. ‘Then maybe Berlin, or London. It’ll be a tour of Europe.’

‘Like Eurovision, but with less dancing.’

‘But the exact same amount of ridiculous costumes,’ Steve said. He liked Eurovision. You couldn’t come back from the dead and become a gay icon _without_ liking Eurovision. 

‘I’m glad you told me about your bond-mate, I would never have guessed.’

‘No one knows, I didn’t want it to be even more tragic when he died. And he’d never have been allowed to enlist if anyone knew he was omega. That’s why we bonded, so he’d have no scent. He took suppressants as well, just in case, but made it through the war. He was probably the first omega soldier, you know? Nowadays it’s fine but… it wasn’t back then.’

‘Huh,’ she looked away. ‘Poor guy. Poor you. I’m going to miss you, Rogers. I’ll pretend I don’t, for appearances sake, but I’ll expect a facetime every week or so, just to see that stupid, noble face of yours.’

‘I love you Natasha,’ he said, and she reared back, the first time he’d ever seen her truly shocked. 

Then she smiled, toothily, and genuine. ‘I know,’ she said. 

*** 

Bucky was there when he got in, doing pull-ups in one of the A-shirts Steve had bought them. Steve averted his eyes with difficulty.

‘You get the suppressants?’ Bucky asked.

‘Yes, and the name of a doctor. The great-great-granddaughter or whatever of whoever we used to get suppressants from, what are the chances?’

‘And she has no idea who I am?’

‘None, and she doesn’t need to. Just pick an identity from your giant stack of fake passports Buck,’ he gestured to them on the coffee table and Bucky smirked. ‘All you need do is say Nita Agarwal sent you. You’ve got an hour.’

‘Is it weird to be nervous?’ Bucky said. ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna react to a doctor examining me, especially not like _that_. I can’t remember it ever happening before.’

‘It probably didn’t happen before, doctors when we were young were hardly the greatest of experts on omega anatomy. You just got your pill and you went away. You want me to come with you?’

‘No, you need to dye your hair, pack some bags for tomorrow. You want a Chinese takeaway on the way back?’

‘You bet,’ Steve said, knowing that as soon as Bucky left he was going to go and finally (finally!) jerk off. But he could pack after that.

‘Wish me luck,’ Bucky said, picking up his cap, pulling it down, throwing a khaki jacket on too. 

‘You got this, pal,’ he said, hoping beyond hope that Bucky wouldn’t freak out, wouldn’t run again, wondering if he could tail him while knowing full well he couldn’t. 

Bucky took a deep breath, came over to Steve, who eyed him warily. But all he did was hug him, wrap his arms tightly round Steve’s torso and squeeze him. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘For giving me my memory back.’

Steve slid his arms round him gingerly, worried Bucky would startle away, and they stood like that, until Bucky said ‘shit, I have to go!’

And it wasn’t until the door had slammed behind him, that Steve realised he was crying.


End file.
